Stealing Chocolate from the Gods is a work of narrative nonfiction about what happens when the ground disappears early and the rest of your life becomes movement.

I was born in Liverpool and grew up working-class in Stevenage, the sort of childhood where you learn to clock exits and jokes in the same breath.

At sixteen I was sent to Holland for what was supposed to be a fresh start and ended up in hospital after being forcibly operated on to remove tattoos from both arms. Skin was taken from my thigh and grafted onto them.

Not just ink removed, but identity taken down to the meat.

That’s the hinge. I run.

What follows is fifty years of movement: factory shifts, clubs, teaching, music, odd jobs, borrowed rooms, drugs, women, strange friendships and stranger situations. India, Sri Lanka, Italy, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America all become versions of the same experiment: perhaps the next place will be different.

Sometimes it is. Usually I’m not.

For a long time I mistook movement for freedom.

Then Mexico changes things. I become a father. Kevincito gives me something I have spent most of my life avoiding: a reason to stay connected to one place and one person. It does not magically make me sensible. Relationships still break. I still move.

Eventually the body starts sending bills I can’t ignore. A massive heart attack in Mexico nearly kills me. I survive, recover just enough to carry on, and before long I’m moving again. Monterrey, Campeche, Guatemala.

Colombia is where the running finally runs out of road. Severe arterial disease leaves me facing major surgery and a return to Britain. This time there is no clever escape route, no new country and no reinvention waiting around the corner. The body has made the decision for me.

This isn’t a redemption story.

I reach the point where movement can no longer do what I need it to.

Movement had become anaesthetic. Reinvention became habit. Then the body started collecting old debts.